K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Animorphs In the time of Dinosuars K.A Applegate My name i...
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K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Animorphs In the time of Dinosuars K.A Applegate My name is Marco. And I'm the idiot who happened to be watching the news on TV, and happened to see the story about the nuclear submarine that went down. Do you ever wish you could just learn to keep your mouth shut? I do. At least in this case I did. Because if I'd just kept my mouth shut, I wouldn't have ended up trying to suck air through my blowhole in the middle of a raging storm that kept dropping thirty-foot waves on my head. But maybe I should back up. Maybe I should explain why I had a blowhole in the first place. I'll make this quick: Things are happening here on good old planet Earth. Things most people would never dream of. Things that if you told people they'd say, "Yeah, right. Want to try on this straitjacket?" We are being invaded. Not by spaceships from outer space firing ray guns. I mean, yes, from spaceships, but mostly the Yeerks don't use a lot of ray guns. The Yeerks are a parasitic species. Like tapeworms or lice or certain gym coaches who think you can't play basketball just because you are somewhat not tall. But Yeerks don't crawl on top of your head like lice. They crawl inside your head. A slug like a big snail slithers into your ear, oozes into your brain, flattens itself out, sinks into all the cracks in your brain, and from that point on, controls you. It can even force you to listen to Kenny G. Actually, it's not funny. I tend to make jokes, especially about things that bother me. And the Yeerks bother me. One of those people who has been enslaved by the Yeerks is my mother. We thought she was dead. She's not. At least I think she's not. When I last saw her she was still alive. Trying to destroy me and my friends, as a matter of fact. Which is a lot worse than just being grounded. Anyway, there are the Yeerks, this parasitic species that rampages throughout the galaxy looking for new host bodies. They control the Gedds, a species from their home planet. They control the Hork-Bajir and the Taxxons. And their target now is Earth and humans. What does this have to do with me having a blowhole? Well, there's another species in on this with us. The Andalites. The Andalites are stretched thin trying to resist the Yeerks. An An-dalite task force got hammered in orbit above Earth. One of them, Prince Elfangor, made it to Earth and happened to crash near my friends and me. He gave us the Andalite morphing power. The ability to absorb DNA from any animal, and then actually, literally become that animal. We use that power to resist the Yeerks. "We" being Jake, who is our prematurely middle-aged, fearless more-or-less leader; Cassie, our animal expert and tree-hugging environmental wacko; Rachel, Jake's fabulously beautiful but totally insane cousin; Tobias, who's a Page 1
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs mouse-eating bird; the Cinnabon-chomping Andalite scorpion-boy we call Ax; and me, Marco, the sensitive, sensible, smart, and good-looking one. Also modest. And honest. And did I mention cute? Anyway, I was hanging out with my dad around noon on a rainy Saturday, slumped down in the easy chair, staring at the TV, wondering if I had the energy to go into the kitchen to get more Doritos, when the news flash came on. A nuclear sub was reported to have developed reactor problems. It was feared sunk. Rescue ships and divers were on the scene, but the storm was making it hard for them. They couldn't find the sub, which could be dousing everyone on board with radiation. "Oh, man," I groaned. "Yeah," my dad agreed. He was slumped on the couch wondering if he had the energy to go to the kitchen and get his Cheez Puffs. "Urn ..." I said. "Are you going to the kitchen?" he asked hopefully. I sighed. "Actually, I just remembered I'm supposed to help Jake with some work over at his house." "Oh. You'll miss the game," he said. "So before you go, could you grab me the bag of Cheez Puffs? And a soda? And a pillow? And give me the remote control." I carried about twenty-four items to my dad, then took off out into the rain to walk to Jake's house. I had to tell him about the sub. I don't know why, I just had to. I guess I thought we could possibly help. Thirty minutes later, the six of us were assembled on a wet beach. There was absolutely no one in sight. No lifeguards. No little old ladies collecting shells. I mean, it was really raining. We were all soaked through and had wet sand caking our shoes. All except Rachel, who I swear has some magic ability to repel dirt, mud, and rainwater. "Well, we have privacy, that's for sure," Jake said, looking around. "What are we going to do with our outer clothing and shoes?" Cassie wondered. See, we can't morph clothing and shoes. Just things that are skintight. I was wearing bike shorts and a way-too-small, totally uncool T-shirt under my clothes. Those I could morph. "I've said it before, something about these super-heroes. Can you Spider-Man? We'd look
I'll say it again," I said. "We have got to do funky morphing outfits. We are a disgrace to imagine us ever being in a comic book alongside like the Clampetts."
"The what?" Cassie asked. "You know, the Beverly Hillbillies." "Marco, you do realize that Spider-Man isn't real, right?" Rachel asked. Page 2
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs "And even if he was, I don't know what fabric that outfit of his is made from. Never bags at the knees or elbows. I mean, come on." "We'd better get going before someone shows up," Jake said glumly. Jake hates dark, overcast days. It makes him grumpy. We stripped off our outer clothes and shoes and stuffed them into a backpack. We stuck the backpack in one of the blue trash barrels they had along the beach. "Maybe we'll get lucky this time and they won't pick up the trash today," Cassie said. "Yeah, it'd be a shame to lose those jeans of yours," Rachel said. "If your legs shrink five inches those jeans would almost fit." Rachel and Cassie are best friends. But they don't agree on the importance of clothes. Tobias called down from above. Jake said. Marco asked. <We are in the ocean, Marco,> Rachel pointed out. I nosed downward and kicked. It was much calmer and quieter below the surface. We were in maybe two hundred feet of water. It's hard to tell, Page 4
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs but it looked that deep, anyway. I was swimming about fifty feet down and could just barely see the ghostly glimmer of sand far below me. Mostly what I saw was murky blue. Not even many fish. I fired an echolocation blast from my head. The sound waves spread out, then bounced back. My dolphin brain drew a mental picture of a seabed scarred by a series of deep fissures. I also "saw" divers in the water, and sensors being towed on long cables from the ships above us. <Even with our echolocation we need to spread out,> Tobias said. Jake agreed. <But everyone stay within thought-speak range of the person on your left and right.> Easier said than done. You ever try and swim while keeping in line with dolphins on your left and right? Plus we had to surface to breathe, and each time we did the waves would push us forward or back. Rachel was on my right. Ax on my left. We advanced across the ocean floor, blasting the water with our ultrasonic sound waves. It had taken forty-five minutes of hard swimming to reach the site. We couldn't go beyond two hours in morph. Not unless we wanted to spend the rest of our lives as dolphins. Forty-five minutes to get there. Forty-five to get back to shore. That only left thirty minutes to search. Not enough. But twenty minutes later I saw, or felt, a strange picture in my head. I fired a new echolocation blast and "listened" carefully. Yes, something weird. Something definitely weird. Something too "hard." I said. In a few seconds, Rachel said, I said. I shot to the surface, filled my lungs, and went down. Down and down, till even my dolphin body began to feel the water pressure. I kept firing echolocating bursts. And then I was certain. It rose just a few feet from the fissure. But if I recalled my submarine war movies, it was a periscope. The sub's commander must have extended it in the desperate hope that someone would see it. Someone had. Although not exactly the someone he'd expected
Jake we'd found the sub. Now the question was: How could we get the Navy divers to find it? Page 5
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Rachel suggested. Rachel almost always likes the direct approach. And in this case, she was right. We needed to get this done with fast. We needed to wrap this up and bail. I said, <we kidnap a diver.> <What?> Marco said. Ax said. <What is the purpose of these submarines? This is a very large craft for simply looking at the seabed?> A second small submersible was on its way down. It was zipping along. And the divers were all heading for the surface. I winced. The purpose of this kind of submarine was a little embarrassing to explain to an alien. Marco explained. <What enemy?> <Well . . . okay, we don't exactly have one right now,> I said, feeling fairly idiotic. <But we used to. And we may get one again.> <We're shopping all the sales,> Marco said brightly. <Enemies "R" Us, EnemyMart, J.C. Enemy. Don't worry, we'll find one.> Rachel asked. Cassie said. I looked down. The rescue vehicle was already pulling away from the sub. But instead of heading up to the surface, it was simply racing away. Like it was desperate to put some distance between it and the sub. Tobias said. I yelled. We turned and took off. We powered our tails and tore through the water like torpedoes. The rescue vehicle was a quarter mile ahead of us. I lost sight of it when we shot to the surface to breathe. Up, suck in air, down and swim, and up, suck in air, down and swim. It was slower going on the surface, but we needed to breathe because we were straining every muscle in our bodies. Rachel said. Flash! A light so bright it seemed to burn right through me. Page 7
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs WHAAAAAAM! The shock wave hit us. I tumbled through a world that was being torn apart at the seams. And then that world went black. Rachel I don't know how long I was unconscious. But when I came to I was on the surface of the water. I was lolling there like some kind of dead fish. First thought: Where are the others? Second thought: How long have I been in morphl I yelled in thought-speak. No answer. I moved my tail and flippers. Okay, at least I wasn't injured. I dove below the surface and looked around. The water was clearer than it had been. Strange, given the fact that a nuclear warhead had just exploded. <Marco! Ax!> We dove down deep. We looked up. And there, outlined against the sun, were four tapered shapes. I said and shot toward them. I bonked one of them with my nose. Tobias yelped. <Jeez! You scared me to death. Good grief, I thought you were one of those lousy wildcats.> Marco said. he grumbled. Jake said. "Okay. Then why is there a volcano over there?" No one said anything for a few seconds. Then all at once we dove down under, leaving Cassie floundering and yelling, "Hey!" I dove down twenty feet, turned and powered my way straight up. I exploded from the water, smooth and sleek as a missile. I shot up into the air, up where I could see beyond the tops of the short, choppy waves. I took a look. Then, too stunned to line up for a dive, I belly flopped. The first dolphin in history to belly flop. Jake demanded. I mumbled. But they all just waited. Waited to hear how I knew about volcanoes. Ax said politely. <But something very large is coming toward us. A pair of creatures of some sort. I just echolocated them.> I said, dismissing it. Ax said. <Who cares? Maybe you missed it, Ax, but we have a volcano - a volcano!-right about where all our houses should be! Let's get going. Cassie, you need to -> "Uh . . . what is that?" Cassie asked. She was staring hard, but she started to morph back into dolphin. <What?> "That!" I turned to follow the direction of her stare. We all turned. It rose ten feet from the water. A very long neck. Like a gray-green giraffe. On the end of that neck was a sculpted, streamlined head about two feet long. And coming up, right behind it, was another tall neck and head. Tobias whispered. <What is that, the Loch Ness monster?!> Marco cried. Tobias said again. Jake said. <Man, they're fast!> We were plowing up the now-placid water. We were going flat out. But the creatures were gaining on us. And the whole time in my head I was going, No way, no way. And yet with each glance at those long necks, with each flash of those snake heads, I became more convinced. The creatures were no more than a hundred feet back. <We can't outrun them,> Jake said grimly. <We either have to split up or fight.> Page 10
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Rachel said. I liked Rachel even before I became a hawk. But now I really like her. She could be a bird of prey. She'd be a natural. But she was wrong this time. <Split up,> I said. she said. an enraged voice cried. <Who did you expect? Jonah? We have to get out of this thing. Ahhhh! My skin is itching and burning.> <Stomach acid,> I said. Rachel said. I said. I could already feel her changing. I felt human fingers pressed against me in the gnashing, enclosed space. She was right. No other choice. And I wasn't going to let her do it alone. I had very few morphs available to me. And only one that would help here. But first I had to revert to bird form. Page 11
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Something like a rock was in the stomach. It was grinding against me with the movements of the stomach wall. And as I lost the tough hide of a dolphin and regained the fragile hollow bones of my own hawk body, the beating became deadly. Even Rachel's body was crushing me, as her elbows and fists and knees were shoved against me, time and again. But all that was nothing compared to one simple fact: I couldn't breathe. Suffocating! I moaned. Rachel couldn't answer. She was human again. But I knew she must be suffocating, too. My left wing was broken. My tail was a mess. I was wracked with pain. But none of that mattered because I was going down now. Sinking and swirling down a long, black well. Too late to morph again. I knew it. I was done. And my last conscious thought was a flash of myself, years earlier, back when I was still completely human. I saw myself playing with the little plastic figurine - a plastic toy model of the animal whose belly I was in. A booklet had come with the figurine. I'd memorized all the facts in that booklet. I thought as my mind shut down. I said. Cassie said. I demanded. I went back to work, ripping now with both huge paws. Digging downward to avoid the ribs. Suddenly water gushed in. Salt water. Cold and wonderful. I kicked and clawed the opening till it was bigger. Then I tumbled out. I hit bottom. I looked up, dazed and disoriented. The creature had beached itself. I was in no more than five or six feet of water. I stood up, my huge bear head broke the surface, and I reared up on my hind legs. Tobias was fluttering weakly in the water. I grabbed him up as gently as I could with bear paws. I lumbered toward shore and set him down on dry land. he asked. <Well . . .> <Busted wing. Feathers a mess. Half my tail feathers ripped out or eaten away by stomach acid. I'm a definite mess. On the other hand, I'm alive.> I said. I reared up to my full height and took a look around. I could tell that we had run up into the mouth of a river. The riverbanks were steep on our side of the river. My pathetically dim bear vision could barely make out some vague shapes moving on the far bank. I sniffed the air. The grizzly sense of smell is excellent. What I smelled was puzzling. I glared at him. It felt weird going human. I'd only done it a few times since the Ellimist had given me back my morphing power. Now I felt my feathers itching as they melted into flesh. My sight grew dim, my hearing became muddy. I rose up, tall, large, clunky, awkward . . . human. "At least the pain is gone now," I said. "Now to get feathery again." A few minutes later, I was my normal - okay, my abnormal - self. Unfortunately . . . Page 21
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Rachel said, sounding outraged. I laughed grimly. "You're just being modest," Cassie said. I said, more sharply than I'd intended. "Oh," Prince Jake said. "Yeah, well, you came through big time on this go-round," Marco said. He held his hands out straight. They were trembling. "I can't stop shaking." "This is insane," Cassie said. She looked around carefully. Peering cautiously, looking, no doubt, for others of the big creatures. "What is going on? Why are there dinosaurs here? Where is here?" She shook her head violently. "No. Not in millions of years, anyway. Tens of millions, probably. No, there is no place on Earth where tyrannosaurs just run around in the woods." "Yeah, I think we'd have heard about it in school," Marco said. I believe his tone of voice indicated something the humans call "dry humor." I have not heard any wet humor, so it is difficult for me to tell the difference. My immediate terror was fading. A deeper pessimism was setting in. It was easy to see that humans - or Andalites - deprived of the power of civilization were pathetically weak in this environment. "Some kind of real-life Jurassic Park." Prince Jake speculated. "Maybe someone actually did it. You know, cloned DNA from old dinosaur bones." I said. <But I have been feeling a strange distortion in my time-keeping sense. This planet is no longer rotating at the same speed as before. I think the likely explanation is that we have traveled a very, very long way in time.> Prince Jake raised one eyebrow and looked at me. "Millions of years?" Page 27
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs "Uh-uh," Marco said, raising his hand. "You saved my life. Don't undo it by killing me with algebra." "How do we get back?" Cassie asked. Tobias cried. I shrugged. "Looks worse than it is. Besides, this grass we're in now isn't bad." He turned his head to look behind us and let out a thought-speak moan. <Score one for Deinonychus. We've screwed up,> he said. Ax was watching the grassy plain. He was using his stalk eyes to swivel carefully in all directions. The sky was shading from blue to brilliant red and orange, with sunset coming on quickly. A massive, distorted-looking red sun slipped below a layer of high clouds and dropped behind the volcano. Page 33
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs "Beautiful," I said, mostly to myself. "The first person in history to appreciate a sunset," Marco said. "How much longer do you figure you'll be doing that, Marco?" Jake asked tolerantly. Marco grinned. His face was red from the glow of sunset. "The first person to ever complain about someone talking too much." "What are we going to do about it getting dark?" I asked. Jake looked surprised. "I don't know. You've been so cool about all this back-to-nature stuff, I guess I was waiting for you to tell us." Was he resentful that I had been taking a more active role? No. Surely not. "I don't have any brilliant ideas." "Doesn't fire keep animals away?" Marco asked. "Not always," I said. "Not predators. In Africa, man-eating lions and leopards go right to villages, into huts and drag people away. In grasslands like this, you get lightning fires all the time. Some of the predators may have learned to let the fire drive smaller prey toward them." "The first really, really depressing example of way too much information in all of history," Marco said. "We have our weapons," I said. Jake said, "Yeah. Three sharp sticks. Plus Ax's tail. Throw in some burning torches and we can probably handle some of the smaller predators." I felt a chill and scooted closer to the fire, which now blazed up fairly well. The image of a huge T-rex looming up suddenly, gold and red from the firelight, its vast mouth open, eyes greedy ... I took a couple of deep breaths. I'm not Rachel. I can't just turn off the fear. If Rachel were here, she'd say something cocky about kicking Tyrannosaurus butt. We'd all know it was just bold talk, but we'd feel better, anyway. "Okay," Jake said. "We sleep in shifts. Ax's time-tracking sense is messed up, but he can approximate two hours and wake us up. Two of us awake at all times. The people who are awake will sit facing out, away from the fire. That way their eyes will be adjusted to seeing in the dark." "Good plan," Marco said. "That way there'll be two of us to scream, 'Oh no, we're toast!' when the next Big Rex shows up." "If a predator shows up, what do we do?" I asked. Jake considered for a moment. "I think the most dangerous morph any of us has is my tiger morph. If we're attacked, I'll morph. Ax will use his tail. Cassie and Marco, you grab your weapons. The three of you try and hold off the ... the whatever shows up ... till I've morphed. An Andalite and a tiger together should be enough. Then Marco and Cassie, you two will morph. But morph something to escape, not fight." "Cassie and I, we wave sharp sticks at a Big Rex?" Marco asked skeptically. "Meanwhile, you're helpless in mid-morph." "You have a better plan?" Jake asked testily. Page 34
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs "Sure. If Big Mister T shows up, we scream and cry and blubber like babies till he eats us." Jake grinned. Then he laughed. So did I. It wasn't even slightly funny, of course, but sometimes fear and exhaustion can combine to make you giddy. "Okay, Cassie and Ax take the first watch. Marco, you and I have to try and sleep." "At least I won't have any bad dreams," Marco said. "I'm already in one." Jake and Marco fell silent. I don't know if they slept at all. I turned away from the fire and looked out into darkness that was deepening with shocking speed. Already the night was rushing toward us out of the east, pushing away the last tendrils of red sunlight. Then I saw it. Like someone had painted a brush stroke of fairy dust across the sky. "Ax," I whispered. "Is that a comet?" "Even to you? You must have seen comets up in space." "Oh. Looks close." Ax said. I was surprised. "Really? Humans thought the same thing." Darkness fell. There was no moon in the sky. The starlight never touched the grass sea around us. The firelight was puny. "Are you scared, Ax?" "Me, too." I felt the stick in my hand. I felt the fire at my back. Little, weak, defenseless Homo sapiens, I faced a night full of terrors. Tobias Deinonychus. That's what they were, I was pretty sure. At least, I thought so. I couldn't remember. But learning about dinosaurs in books isn't like seeing them face-to-face. They were hunting us. Like a wolf pack. They were taking their time because we were unfamiliar prey. A strange creature that ran on two legs while carrying a big bird. Yes, we were something new. New meat. Rachel ran toward the spot where the camp-fire had been before the Page 35
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs failing light had rendered the smoke invisible. It had seemed to be coming from the edge of the plain that opened before us. As she ran, I watched the Deinonychus pack. I watched them as a professional predator myself. Was there communication between them? It sure seemed like the two bands of Deinonychus were moving in concert. It was a triangle, basically. One group behind and to the west. The second group level with us but to the east. We were running north. If we veered slightly left, we'd hit the edge of the forest. Was that the right move? "Why?" she managed to gasp. Rachel's in shape, but running barefoot while carrying a hawk is not easy. Rachel didn't say anything. But she did veer left a little. Toward the trees. I focused my hawk eyes on the westerly group. They were speeding up! A quick glance to the east. They were speeding up, too, but only after the first group did. I said. I said. <But then we have to act quickly. We have to separate.> "No way!" She assumed I was being self-sacrificing. "Wha . . . wha . . ." "Okay." She reached down and lifted me up. Like someone heaving a basketball from her chest, she threw me upward. Too low! I missed the branch. I flapped my wings, an instinct. A painful, searingly painful, instinct. I hit the ground. "I can't do it." She grabbed me again. This time she put her whole body into it. Up! The branch. I flapped my good wing, spun in the air, grabbed. Yes. I grabbed with my second talon and held firm. She ran. At least, she hobbled and staggered away through the trees. And I waited. I waited and tried not to think of what would happen to Rachel if I messed up. My branch was just six feet above the ground. I felt totally helpless. I was a bird who could not fly. And there is nothing weaker than a bird who can't fly. I gripped my branch. Noises. Many clawed feet running. A Deinonychus appeared. Its tail was minus about a foot of length. The leader of the pack. "Heeeeessss!" He froze. He looked at the mess Rachel had left. But he did not walk under my branch. Then another Deinonychus. This one ran right over and sniffed curiously. He had a jagged scar two feet long down his back. I could see it clearly. Short-tail turned away. Scar walked beneath me. His head was just a foot below me. Now! Page 37
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs I dropped. I opened my talons. I sank them into reptilian skin, right along the old scar. "Hrroooohhh!" The Deinonychus turned his head to glare at me with one eye. He opened a mouth lined with ridiculously large teeth. I almost lost it. I had to fight the urge to flap away, broken wing and all. Focus, Tobias, I told myself. I locked the fear out of my mind. I held tight with my talons. And I focused on the dinosaur. It may have been sixty-five or seventy or eighty million years b.c., but DNA was still DNA. Tobias I acquired the Deinonychus. I absorbed his DNA into me. And he grew passive and calm, like most animals do when being acquired. When I was done he wandered away, as if he'd forgotten what he'd been doing. I stood there, utterly vulnerable on the forest floor. And then I heard a roar. Not a saurian roar, but the full-throated roar of a very large mammal. Rachel! I focused my mind again. I pictured the Deinonychus in my mind. And slowly at first, then faster, the changes began. All right, Tobias, keep your mind strong! I warned myself. It was a new morph. I'd have to deal with the Deinonychus's instincts. My feathers began to stiffen and harden. It was as if someone were coating them with rubber cement or something. The feather pattern remained at first, but they were glued down. And then they began to melt together. My beak began to extend, out and out, and at the same time the edges became serrated, almost like a saw. And each saw tooth grew and extended, longer and longer, to begin to form the teeth of the Deinonychus. All the while I grew. Up and up. From standing a foot tall to five times that height. My tail feathers twined and twisted together and then my tail hardened and grew. Out and out, impossibly long! Everywhere I could feel the muscles bulging and growing. Layers of muscle over thickening bones. I rose high on legs like steel springs. My talons became less graceful and more deadly. I found I could raise the huge, killing claw. Yes, that's how I would run, with that claw raised so that nothing would dull its razor-sharpness. I loved that claw. I pictured it ripping open ... no! Already the dinosaur's instincts were struggling to rise up in my own mind. But that wasn't going to happen. It couldn't happen. Rachel needed me. But the power! The vivid, electric energy in every cell of my body! Page 38
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs My eyesight grew dim. But not much worse than human eyes, and better in that they could see fairly well in the dark. My hearing diminished, but again, not by much. And to compensate for those losses, the sense of smell flooded my consciousness. What? What smell was that? I stood up and sniffed the wind. "Roooooaaarrrr!" a deep, hoarse voice bellowed. "Heeeesss! Heeeesss!" A more familiar cry. The hunt was on! The pack had cornered its prey. I had to hurry. Hurry, or all the best meat would be taken. I'd have nothing but cold carrion. With my mouth watering, I bounded away, tearing through the underbrush to join the pack. Jake I woke up. It was dark. cold on the other side. dreaming of home. In my breakfast table with my
I was all hot on the side near the fire and I heard the gurgling of the stream. I'd been dream I was eating dinosaur-shaped cereal at the parents.
I didn't want to think about my parents. What they would be going through worrying about me just made me sick to my stomach. "Have you seen anything?" "Yaaahhh!" Cassie yelped. Then, "Good grief, you scared me." Marco moaned in his sleep. I rubbed my eyes. I could not believe I had actually fallen asleep. But obviously I had. "Ax, how are you doing?" "How long was I asleep?" Approximately one of the current hours and fifty-two minutes.> He came close and tossed another piece of wood on the fire. I stretched out my foot and poked Marco. He moaned again. Then he sat up. "Oh. So it wasn't a dream. Too bad." "Cassie, you and Ax can -" I stopped. I had looked up at the sky. "What is that?" "It's a comet," Cassie said. "Isn't it absolutely beautiful?" "Yeah. Looks awfully close." I gazed up at the sweep of bright dust trailing from the brilliant head. Page 39
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs I glanced over at Ax. He was outlined against the stars, a dark shadow with stalk eyes turning restlessly. "It's not going to hit us or anything, is it?" I laughed when I said it. "Don't call me prince," Jake said automatically. "There weren't any Yeerks anywhere near that submarine when it blew up," I said. "Especially not any Yeerk spacecraft. I mean, come on, I think we'd have noticed." "Highly advanced dinosaurs?" I said. "Professor T-rex? I don't think so." "Last night I saw some weird flashes far off," Jake said. "Me, too," Cassie said. "I assumed they were lightning or something." We resumed walking. "Ax-man, I think maybe you're just nuts." <Me? Wrong? It is possible,> Ax said dubiously. <But the nature of the light certainly seemed to . . .> He droned on for a while about the wavelengths and the retinal impact patterns and distance-sense and a lot of other Andalite stuff that Page 48
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs humans would probably learn about someday. I tuned it out. I was watching the Triceratops herd, which was off to our side now. I mean, come on, every little kid has a toy plastic Triceratops at some time. And here they were. Real. Actual dinosaurs moving along, munching the grass, occasionally using their huge long horns to dig up a tasty herb. It was cool. Set aside the fact that we had taken a big elevator ride about ten floors down on the food chain. It was still cool. "Oh, man, look. I think we're coming up on some kind of big gorge or whatever," Jake said. The prairie before us did seem to stop suddenly. The grass wasn't waving beyond a certain point. "We'll have to go around," Cassie said. "Why?" I wondered. "Where exactly is it we think we're going?" "What do you want us to do?" Jake asked peevishly. "Sit down right here and start building a new civilization?" "I'm just saying it's not like we have an appointment to be somewhere." We marched on, unable to see the extent of the rift till we got close. And then suddenly we could see. It was incredible. Like walking up on the Grand Canyon the first time. We were at the edge of a valley hundreds of feet deep and miles across. It gave me vertigo just standing there, like I might fall in. And it would be a very long fall, with plenty of time to scream on the way down. But that wasn't what really knocked the wind out of us. Because see, the valley wasn't empty. Down there, spread across a mile of valley floor, were glittering, shining buildings. Buildings. And hovering protectively above those buildings was something that looked an awful lot like a flying saucer. Tobias How's the wing?" Rachel asked. "They hurt all over again." "Nope. Not like you hurt my stomach when you opened me up like you were gutting a fish." "I know. I'm cranky. I didn't exactly have a good night's sleep. I seem to remember having to morph the grizzly bear, only to have you come along and slice me up like I was a pepperoni pizza. Slice me up like I Page 49
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs was a hunk of cheese." I sighed. I tried to balance on Rachel's shoulder without digging my talons in. We'd ripped a patch of the dead Deinonychus's skin to cover her shoulder, but it wasn't staying on. "Sliced me up like I was a ham," Rachel muttered. "Like I was bacon. And eggs. And some hash browns. Denny's. I'd give up shopping for a Denny's Grand Slam breakfast right now. The one with the pancakes. Get the hash browns as a side order. Two sausage links, two slices of bacon, two eggs over medium, you know? Not too soft and runny. I don't like them soft and runny. Maple syrup on the pancakes. Has to be maple. What kind of person puts boysenberry syrup on pancakes?" <So I'm guessing you're hungry?> She turned her icy blue eyes toward me. "Like a loaf of bread. That's how you sliced me up. Like a loaf of bread you get fresh from the bakery, all crusty and crispy and golden on the outside and soft and white and still-warm inside. And raspberry preserves. Has to be raspberry. I like Smuckers. A big jar of raspberry preserves with the seeds. I mean, what kind of baby has to have seedless preserves?" I looked at her with my hawk's eyes. I was inches away. It was like looking at her through a microscope, practically. She hadn't slept, hadn't brushed her hair, and she was in a bad mood. But she looked great. I looked away. What was the point? Jeez, my own tiredness and hunger must be affecting me. I was starving. I could see little shrewlike mammals flitting between tree roots and cowering beneath ferns, but with a busted wing there was nothing I could do. All I could do was watch the trees as we walked. We had left the Deinonychus pack behind in the night. As leader of the pack, I'd snarled at them till they backed away. I left them looking lost and stupid. But pretty soon they'd get around to choosing a new leader. Rachel had acquired one of them. It hadn't been easy, but I'd been able to control the murderous creature long enough for her to touch him. Now we were wandering along in the forest. Looking for food. Looking for Jake and the others. Looking for a clue of what to do. We were entering an area with more vegetation now. There were clusters of palm trees here and there. Clumps of five or ten trees with some bushes around the base. It made me nervous. They blocked my view. On the other hand .... I asked. I gazed up jealously at the fruit. I was low down on the ground, not able to see much but the towering trees. But something caught my eye. Through the smooth trunks and riotous bushes, I saw something curved. It looked ridiculously like a handheld fan. Only much bigger. There were spines or spokes with brightly-patterned green and red fabric between them. No, not fabric. Skin. But it had to be from something dead. It wasn't moving. Totally still. Rachel reached down to lift me up. "What is it?" "I'm morphing," she said. "I'm hungry, you're hungry. Maybe we can take this guy down and have a nice big dinosaur breakfast." <What? What?> "I'm morphing that dannynockorus." Page 51
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs She couldn't answer. Her tongue was no longer human. Her skin was pebbly and rough. Her shoulder sloped downward and I jumped off to land in the grass. I wasn't exactly happy with Rachel at that point. But at the same time, I wondered if maybe she was right. We had the Deinonychus morph. Why not use it? I began to morph myself. Great, it would mean resetting my splint yet again. This was no way to heal. Then again, starving wasn't all that good for your health, either. The breeze shifted. The skin and bone sail moved. It moved to catch the breeze. Why? I should know. There was some fact hiding just in the back of my head. What was I forgetting? I pictured my toy dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus rex, Brachiosaurus, Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, Spinosaurus. Spinosaurus? Big sail on its back. What about it? What was it like? What did it do? Was it an herbivore? Moving! CRASH! CRASH! Crrrrr-UNCH! Up rose the sail as the Spinosaurus stood up. Crash went the bushes as it swiveled to look at us. Crunch went a tree trunk as it thrust its head through the trees to get a closer look at us. The head was bigger than Rachel. She was just completing her Deinonychus morph. Would she be able to control the dinosaur's active instincts? She was more experienced at morphing than I was. The Spinosaurus glared at us. Or at Rachel, at least. Tobias said. <But I can guarantee none of my toy dinosaurs ever carried guns.> Page 53
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs The creature gazed curiously at us with what seemed to be eyes, although they were mere indentations in its face. From its head a pair of antennae, flexible as whips, grew and began waving toward us. Satisfied after a few seconds of this, the antennae were retracted. "You may not kill those creatures. There are very few left. They are ours. All creatures are ours. All things are ours. What are you?" it asked in a rough, raspy, buzzing voice. It was speaking English. Now, on Star Trek you see aliens all the time. Like that would be normal. But in real life encounter an alien speaking English, it's just weird. You very least they should be speaking Russian or Japanese or
speak English when you figure at the something.
"Answer." <We're . . . dinosaurs,> I said, feeling fairly idiotic. "You speak now without making sound. Explain." <Why don't you explain?> I said. <Who are you? What are you doing here? And how do you speak our language?> "We hear while you are talking. Listening long time. Since night." I asked Tobias. <What are you?> Tobias demanded. "We are the Nesk. This is our planet. Change to your other form." "This weapon can cause creatures to become unconscious. This happened to the great beast you were attacking. But it can also cause death. Change into your other forms. Or I will cause your death." The Nesk raised the weapon and pointed it at us. Now, maybe I have to back down before a fifty-foot-long Spinosaurus. But I've faced plenty of pushy aliens with ray guns. I knew this Nesk character with the ego problem would expect me to charge him, like a dinosaur. But I'm a human. Better yet, I'm a gymnast. So, just like on the balance beam, I spun on one leg and whipped my rigid tail into the Nesk. Page 54
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs My tail hit hard. It slammed into the Nesk at his chest level. My tail broke him in two. The top half simply fell off. Like I'd chopped through a tree. I cried, horrified. I'd only intended to knock him down. But then my horror changed tone. The severed lower body seemed to be dissolving. Breaking into thousands and tens of thousands of tiny squirming pieces! And the fallen upper body was still holding the weapon. Raising it toward me again! No time for pity. I lunged, mouth wide-open. I bit down on that raised hand. It dissolved. Crumbled. I felt a squirming in my mouth. Then stinging, burning. I spit out the gun. It hit the dirt. And a wave made up of the Nesk's body parts raced to reach it. My mouth was still alive with stinging and burning. The tiny reddish body parts began to crawl out of my jaw, up onto my muzzle. Up where my eyes could see them clearly. Then I remembered that smell. The acrid smell of a tunnel, the stink of deadly automatons racing to tear me apart. Ants! The Nesk was made up of millions and millions of ants. Cassie Okay, those buildings were not built by dinosaurs," Marco said. Jake looked at Ax. "Ax? Do you have any idea what is going on here?" Ax looked as puzzled as he was capable of looking. "Ax, at this point humans aren't even a gleam in some tiny mammal's eye. We're a long, long way from seeing the first primate. Let alone an actual human. Could they be Andalites?" Ax said. <We, too, have not yet evolved by this point. In fact, I believe our planet is still wandering between two different stars, one of which will later go nova, but in such a way that the shock wave will -> "A simple 'no' would do," Marco interrupted. "The Pemalites?" I suggested. We knew of the Pemalites from Erek. Erek looked and acted like a normal kid, but he was actually an android- a Chee - built by the extinct race called Pemalites. Marco shook his head. "Erek told us when they arrived on Earth, the last Pemalites were dying. The Chee joined their essence or whatever with wolves. There aren't any wolves. We're probably tens of millions of years away from wolves, too." Page 55
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs "So who is hanging around on Earth in this era who can build cities and flying saucers?" Jake asked impatiently. "Why don't I go ask them?" I said, pointing to the small city in the valley. "Or at least go check them out. My osprey morph would be perfect. There are birds in this era, so I shouldn't be too obvious." Jake nodded. "Okay. That's what we'll do. We'll all go. But this just gets weirder and weirder." "You know, only one of us has to go," I suggested. "Why don't I do it? You guys can all stay here for now." Jake cocked an eyebrow. "What are you talking about?" "Well, shouldn't we take the absolute minimum risk?" Jake shook his head and kept looking at me like he couldn't figure me out. "Look, we've already lost Rachel and Tobias," I blurted. "I lost my best friend. I don't want to lose . . . you know. Anyone else." Marco looked like he was right on the verge of making a wisecrack. But he stopped. Still, I guess he just couldn't totally restrain himself, so he said, "Why don't I go with Cassie? Somehow I don't think it's me she's worried about losing." He gave Jake a sidelong smirk. Jake rolled his eyes. "We are not going to lose anyone, okay? It's probably safer for us all to be in the air together. Here on the ground we have Big Rex to worry about." It made sense. But it didn't make me feel any better. It had been just twenty-four hours since I'd last seen Rachel. I hadn't had all that much time to think about her. I'd been busy staying alive. And I guess the truth is, I almost didn't want to think about her really being gone. But last night, in that terrible black chaos, blind, unable to tell where Jake's terrified cries were coming from, I just kept thinking, No, it can't happen again. I can't lose Jake, too. Now here we were, staring down at what might be our only salvation in this dangerous world. But I was more worried than before. Maybe I trust animals more than civilization. "Okay," I said. "But I get a bad feeling about this. See, this can't be right. There can't be a city down there. It doesn't make sense. There are no cities in the age of dinosaurs. And no flying saucers, either. I know we have to check it out, but we need to be careful." I began to focus on my osprey morph. An os-prey is a type of hawk that normally lives by water and eats fish. Gray feather patterns began to appear on my skin. I saw my bare feet become talons, my arms twist into wing shapes. It was a morph I had done many times before. But it was a morph from a different world. This was a world where true birds seemed to be small in number. There was a nice breeze blowing. And I could guess that there would be excellent thermals - warm updrafts - welling up from the steep valley walls. <Everyone ready?> Jake asked. Page 56
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Marco yelled. Half a dozen small dinosaurs, each standing on two legs and no more than three feet high, goggled at us with huge yellow eyes. Ax said. Marco said. <Marco, how can you possibly -> WHAM! Something hit me! I was tumbling through the air. I fell ten feet, opened my wings again and veered into a breeze. I caught air. Nothing broken. <Jake!> I cried. I said. Ax said tersely. They were dropping from caves in the valley wall. Three, four, six of them. They opened their wide leather wings and swooped toward us. Tobias They swarmed toward Rachel. Millions of ants. And a group of them was already reforming around the weapon, forming a sort of hand to raise it high and aim it. I had a very low-tech idea of how to deal with that. I leaped. I landed with both feet on the ants around the weapon. And I began to stomp. I stomped like mad with my Deinonychus feet. They weren't great feet for stomping because they were basically built like bird feet. But they were fast. I was stomping at a rate of several stomps per second. And whatever kind of super-alien ants these might be, they couldn't stand some man-sized dinosaur stomping on them. The Nesk broke and ran. I roared in triumph and turned to Rachel. She was avidly licking the ants off her with her long tongue. <What on or off the Earth was that?> I said. I yelled. Rachel said grimly. Directly ahead of us was a small herd of Triceratops. Of course, small only referred to the number of animals in the herd. Each one was the size of an elephant. <What?> I didn't have time to explain. We reached the Triceratops. One huge bull swung his three-foot-long horns toward us in challenge. I sidestepped him and leaped onto the back of an equally big but less alert female. I leaped! Soared through the air, coiled my legs, timed it just right to slam my legs down on the Triceratops's back, bounced off her, and hurtled another ten feet in the air. From up there I could see the trap. Then I was fall ing. WHUMPF! I hit, rolled, jumped up and yelled, Rachel yelled. We hauled left. Ch-ch-ch-CHEEWWW! Explosions of earth and rock cut across our path but I didn't care. I'd seen what was up ahead. This was better. We raced, panting and gasping, toward what looked to us like the end of the world. A sudden gap. An emptiness. <What is it the sky divers always say before they jump?> I asked. Page 59
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Rachel yelled. WHAM! Tobias aimed for Rachel and slammed into her. Rachel was knocked into the cliff wall. Tobias was able to catch a ledge. Rachel scrabbled frantically, but kept missing her hold. She tumbled into a nest of the flying dinosaurs. There was a furious falling, rattling, screaming, dirt-flying tussle that rolled down the cliff, but when the dust cleared, there was Rachel . . . or at least a dinosaur. . . holding tight to the legs of one big leather wing and the neck of another. She dragged them down the side of that cliff, both of them flapping madly. I dove after her, calling to the others. Down, down, down. Then WHAM! She landed. But not on the valley floor. She landed in midair. She was crumpled on what looked like midair. And the two tattered, leather wings were beside her. Also in midair. Ax yelled. I pulled up, just as my breastbone scraped along what seemed like a pure, clear glass roof. The others swooped down and landed on the force field. Cassie cried. Page 61
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs We were all treated to the utterly bizarre sight of an osprey attempting to hug a dinosaur. Marco began, Rachel said. I asked. Tobias said. Rachel said. <What's going on? We were being chased by these aliens who are ants but who can join together to form bodies and carry guns. He ... or they . . . said they were the Nesk.> Every eye turned to Ax. He sounded a little exasperated. Everyone laughed. Even Marco. It was good having the group together again. But I had to get us moving. <Excuse me, but we seem to be standing on a force field a hundred feet or so above a valley filled with aliens. Maybe we should leave. Unfortunately, there are still a bunch of mad Pteran-odons above us.> Tobias pointed out. a voice said. I looked at Ax. He looked at me. Everyone looked at everyone else. None of us had spoken. None of us even knew the word "mercora." Out across the force field, they appeared very gradually. At first there was just a ripple in the air, then a sort of bad TV picture full of static. Then the picture was clear and real and three-dimensional. Page 62
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Ax said enthusiastically. <Excellent!> We were face-to-face with the aliens. Not that we could be sure where the face was, exactly. Ax We Andalites know more about alien races than anyone in the galaxy. We have been in space longer and traveled farther. Plus, we are scientists as well as warriors, so when we find a new race we study it. As opposed to wiping it out or enslaving it, as the Yeerks do. We know of the Gedds and Hork-Bajir and Taxxons, the Korla, the Skrit Na, the humans, and many, many others. But this race, these Mercora, were just strange. For one thing, they were not at all symmetrical. There were three of the creatures. They moved upon seven legs. Four on one side, three on the other. To make matters worse, the four legs were larger than the three. So they scuttled sideways in the direction of the small legs. They stood about half the height of a tall human, and seven or eight feet wide. On the side with the four big legs, there was a sort of three-way pincer claw. It looked very powerful. It looked like the sort of thing I would not want to have to fight against. On the other side, the weak side, there were two arms similar to my own, but even stronger than human arms. The arms ended in long, tapered, delicate fingers. There were a lot of eyes. They kept opening and shutting, one or two or three at a time. They were each hidden beneath tiny trap doors in the Mercora's exoskeleton or shell. Eyes were forever appearing and disappearing. It was very, very distracting. Marco muttered. <Someone who can win a staring contest with Ax.> <We are the Mercora,> one of them said in thought-speak. <We are immigrants to this planet. We thought we had encountered most of the many species on this planet. But we have never encountered an intelligent species here before.> It is strange the way humans will resort to what they call humor when they are frightened. Once again it struck me as strange that they had risen to dominate the very dangerous and hostile environment of Earth. I wondered how well they would have fared if they had coexisted with the dinosaurs. <May I ask what you call yourselves?> the Mercora spokesman said. Cassie asked us all privately. <We're sixty-five million years before the first Yeerk will show up on Earth,> Prince Jake said. Prince Jake stepped forward. As well as a falcon walking on a force field could step. <We are called humans. Except for this one . . .> He tilted his head toward me. The Mercora looked confused. Maybe. It was hard to tell. I can barely interpret human facial expressions. But in any case it opened and closed groups of eyes in rapid succession. <Well . . .> Prince Jake said. Marco said. the Mercora said. I responded. Marco said dryly. "Is anyone else's head exploding from all this?" I asked. "Great," Jake said, stomping a few steps in frustration, then turning around again. "So if I suggest we attack the Nesk, maybe that wipes out the future. And if I suggest not to attack the Nesk, that could also wipe out the future. Excellent. Perfect. As long as it's all nice and clear." Tobias said quietly. <But another decision may be so obvious we can't ignore it.> No one asked what he meant because at that point some Mercora showed up with more food. But I filed away his words. I filed them away in my head and I had the definite feeling I'd be double-clicking on that file again. AX I am often amazed at Prince Jake's ability to make decisions. I call him my prince because any Andalite warrior needs a prince to serve. But I know that he is just a human youth, as I am an Andalite youth. And yet he is very impressive for a human youth. He understands instinctively that making no decision is also a decision. So he accepts the responsibility. If he were an Andalite I have no doubt he would become a true prince. Still, he does very well for a human. In the end, we decided to "go for it." That is a human expression. As I understand it, the expression means that without having any clear idea of why we should do something, we would do it anyway. We would attack at dawn. I asked why dawn. "Tradition," Marco said. "You do shoot-outs at high noon, you stretch in the seventh inning, you attack at dawn." Like much of human thinking, this is a mystery to me. "You also get executed at dawn," Cassie said. "Thank you, Cassie, for that bit of optimism." We had explained our plan to the Mercora. They approved. We would attack the Nesk home base and seize an explosive weapon. A bomb. A "nuke," as my human friends said. Then we would return to the ocean and attempt to Page 68
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs explode this "nuke" in such a way that it would close the Sario Rip and return us to our own time. I hoped the Mercora would have some idea how to do this. I certainly didn't. We learned about Sario Rips in school. But I wasn't really paying attention that day, and I can't be expected to remember all the things I learned in school. Can I? I was sure my human friends understood this. But to be absolutely sure, I mentioned it as we sped through the night toward the Nesk base aboard a ground-hugging Mercora transport. "What? What?!" I was mistaken. It was clear from the expression he made with his human mouth, and the way his voice became loud and rose at the end toward a sort of shriek, and also by the way his eyes alternately narrowed and expanded, that Prince Jake had not been entirely clear on this point. the Mercora said. I nodded as if I understood. But I was puzzled. The Mercora scuttled back aboard their ship. It lifted silently off the ground with an intriguing violet glow, then sped away into the darkness. I don't know about the humans, but I felt extremely lonely. I am always alone, being the only Andalite on planet Earth. But now I was more alone than that. My own people would not exist for tens of millions of years. We were in the dark, a very deep darkness, beneath the glowing comet, in a past that was not my own, in a past filled with destructive monsters. From far off I heard, "Hunh-huhnroooaaarrr." Then Prince Jake said, "Okay, let's morph." Cassie I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to be doing this. We didn't really have a plan. We didn't truly know what we were doing. But I couldn't sit it out. No way. Not when my friends were facing danger. I looked up. The comet was shockingly big in the quarter of the distance from horizon to horizon. it frightened me. Ahead, in the direction of the slight, reddish glow that seemed to hover in the the summit of the volcano.
sky. The tail spread a It was beautiful. But Nesk base, there was a air. I realized it was
"Okay, let's morph," Jake said. There was no doubt which morph he meant. This was not a place for my osprey or my dolphin, my skunk or even my wolf. This was dinosaur country. I had only one morph that was useful in this situation. Tyrannosaurus rex. The tyrant lizard king. In all of Earth's history, all the millions of years and all the billions of animals that have come and gone, this one single creature was the most powerful predator. "I can't believe I'm stuck in a lousy little Deinonychus morph," Rachel complained. "You guys all get to do Big Daddy, and Tobias and I have to Page 70
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs be Babysaurus." "I wish I wasn't doing it," I said. "Yeah, right," Rachel snorted. There are some things about Rachel I still don't understand. And things about me that must mystify her, I guess. Rachel loves the big predator morphs. I don't. I never want to hurt anyone or anything. Not even when I have to. Not even when there's no choice. "Tell you one thing," Marco said. "If you're gonna walk around in the dark here in Cretaceous world, you want to be carrying the big guns. And Big Rex is the biggest." "I guess I'd rather have the Mercora's force fields," I said. "I like the way they do things: They protect themselves without having to be so violent." Rachel said. Marco said. Rachel said. <We need you.> Cassie mourned. Marco said coldly. <Surviving and getting home,> Rachel amended. Cassie said. <Us. We are human civilization. We have all that stuff inside us. It doesn't matter what year it is.> Ax supplied. I had finished morphing back to Tyran-nosaurus. I waited for Marco to toss out some clever comeback. It never came. Instead, as we once again headed for the Nesk camp, I heard him whisper so that no one but me could hear: Rachel asked impatiently. <Warehouses or storage rooms over there,> Marco said. <Which, thanks to the fact that our lives are totally, completely Page 78
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs INSANE, we actually are,> Marco said. Rachel said. We advanced on the base, not exactly stealthily. There was a definite impact sound each time my Tyrannosaurus foot hit the ground. I focused on the center storeroom. I glanced over to the trees. The Nesk ships would have a hard time following us through the trees. But getting to them would be difficult. Especially if it took me a while to find what we were after. The base seemed empty, deserted. But when I focused my Tyrannosaurus eyes, I could see narrow columns of the antlike creatures spreading out like a web across the entire area. When I lowered my foot near one of the columns, it simply swerved aside. We passed closer to the small, oval ship. It was perhaps twice the size of an Andalite fighter, but it was made up of three interlocking oval tubes. I wished I had time to study it. The storeroom, just ahead. It had appeared to be built of crude metal. But when I got closer, I could see that it was actually dirt. It had been built in just the same way as the mound, by the labor of millions of the tiny creatures. Then, it had been covered in some sort of residue and polished till it was bright. I said. Scrr-EEEEEE-eeeee-EEEEEE-eeee-eeee. Scrr-E E E E E-eeeee- E E E E E-eeee-eeee! A screaming siren! Flashing lights! The robot defense towers blazed with green and blue light. The spacecraft began to power up. The entire base was suddenly very alive. Very, dangerously, alive! I cried. <What, are you kidding?> Marco demanded. Scrr-EEEEEE-eeeee-EEEEEE-eeee-eeee. Scrr-E E E E E-eeeee- E E E E E-eeee-eeee! Cassie yelled. A red-black river of Nesk poured from the mound. More belched up from the ground beneath us. The soil was alive with them! Millions, millions of them. Tobias One minute we were standing in a ghost town. The next minute it was like being trapped in the middle of an out-of-control video arcade. Lights! Sirens! Spaceships powering up. The robot security towers shining broad-spectrum floodlights everywhere. And worst of all, millions of Nesk everywhere! But they hadn't attacked us. I said. Jake said. Ax said. I barely had time to think what? when the tower opened fire. The others were all past the tower. But Cassie and I were trapped between the deadly fire from the tower and the advancing fighters. Suddenly, Jake and Marco turned back. They came running at the tower from behind. The tower was thirty or forty feet tall. The two tyran-nosaurs slammed into a corner of its support beams. CRRR-UNCH! The tower did not fall. But it did shake. And it sagged to one side. Just enough that their next shot went wild. Jake and Marco slammed it again, and now Cassie and I were caught up with them. Cassie gave the supports a devastating kick. Page 82
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Slowly, slowly, then faster and faster, the robot tower began to fall. It fell like a redwood, straight down toward the Nesk mound. It helped, but not enough. We'd been too slow. As we raced for the woods, the fighters closed in. There was no way to outrun them. No way to outmaneuver them. They had us cold. We were all going to die, sixty-five million years before any of us would be born. Rachel We hit the tree line, me and Ax, In my front claws I held a small, oblong white tube. According to Ax, a nuclear explosive. Let me just say this. Carrying around a nuclear weapon? That'll make you nervous. I looked back. And I saw what was about to happen. Three very big Rexes - Jake, Marco, and Cassie - were running. Head forward, tail back, running like roadrunners. A Deinonychus was in the mouth of one Tyrannosaurus. And two spacecraft were practically above them. It would be point-blank slaughter now. Ax said. <What do you mean, hopeless?> I demanded. he explained. I remembered him saying something earlier about that. But it was irrelevant to me. <Exactly,> I agreed grimly. <Maybe if they're shooting at me, one of the others will get away.> I started back out into the open. I heard Ax come lumbering behind me. CH-CH-CH-CHEEEEW! The pyramid ship fired. Jake cried. He fell forward, half a dinosaur. I screamed. The pyramid ship turned at a leisurely pace, hovering directly above the writhing, thrashing, helpless monster who was Jake. CH-CH-CH-CHEEEW! Page 83
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs At point-blank range, the Nesk pyramid ship fired. Cassie screamed. The blast was blinding. But when the flash cleared, Jake was still there! An electric glow illuminated a sort of invisible shell around him. Ax said. Then we saw the two Mercora ships. Exactly like flying saucers. One was just above the pyramid ship. It had projected the force field to protect Jake. The Nesk pyramid fighter saw it now, too. It fired. At the same instant, the Mercora fired. BOO-BOOOOM! The twin explosions were almost simultaneous. The pyramid ship and the Mercora saucer both blew apart. I thought I saw a big Mercora claw go spinning away into the darkness. The remaining Mercora saucer hovered above Jake and the others. The remaining Nesk ship seemed to hesitate. And while it did, Jake and the others began to demorph. I began to demorph, but it was an agonizing wait while the Nesk considered whether to attack or retreat. The saucer hovered. The Nesk hovered. Standoff. Jake, Cassie, Marco, and Tobias all de-morphed. Ax and I stepped out from the trees, out in plain view. The Nesk were looking at humans for only the second time, and they were seeing an Andalite for the first time ever. "What do you think they're going to make of you?" I asked Ax. Ax said. As if the Nesk had heard him, their ship suddenly veered off and retreated to the wreckage of the base. I laughed. "Guess you're right, Ax. Looks like the Nesk have had enough. Modern age or Cretaceous, no one can beat the team of human and Andalite." The Mercora saucer picked us up, us and our little nuke. But they were a grim, depressed bunch of aliens. It was hard to tell at first. But then I noticed that each of them was minus one of their smaller legs. There were just oozing stumps. "What happened to your legs?" I asked. But even as the words were out of my mouth, I saw the limbs in the corner. They were laid out on a brightly colored cloth which was draped over a shelf. There was something ceremonial about it. Almost religious. Ax asked politely. <We must make the sacrifice of pain. The legs will regenerate, but those Page 84
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs we honor will not,> the Mercora pilot said. "They don't want to ask us for the nuke," Jake said. "That's carrying politeness a long way," Marco said. "If it was me, I'd be like, 'Hand that over, pal.'" "If we give up the nuke, we have no way home," Rachel pointed out. "We have no choice!" Cassie said. "Are the six of us more important than this entire settlement? Are we supposed to condemn them to death just because we want to get home again?" "Wait a minute, are you serious?" Marco demanded. "We're gonna give up our only ticket out of here? I don't think so." "Ax, if that comet hits, how much damage will it do?" Jake asked. But Ax couldn't answer. He was distracted by what I was telling him in private thought-speak. Distracted by what I was asking him to do. To the Mercora I said, They left. I met Ax's gaze. He was looking at me with his two main eyes. His stalk eyes were staring down at the small but devastating weapon he now held in his hands. Cassie The Mercora went away. And when they came back, we gave them the nuke. I was surprised by the final vote. It was four to two, with Rachel and Marco against. I guess Jake felt he owed his life to the Mercora. Same as I felt. But I was surprised by the quiet way that Tobias and Ax went along. Neither of them said anything. Just voted with Jake and me. The Mercora took the weapon and raced to their remaining saucer. I watched from the window as it began to power up. <We need to get out of here,> Tobias said, speaking at last. "Why?" <We have to be far, far from here when that comet hits.> "What do you mean, when it hits?" I demanded. "The Mercora think this will work. They think they can break it up into small chunks that will burn up entering the atmosphere." Page 87
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs Tobias stared at me with his cold hawk eyes. I just stared. We all did. "Wait a minute," Marco said. "If we're not using it, we better hope the Mercora can! Hey, genius, we're down here, too! That comet hits and we get pounded five miles down through solid rock. That's gonna hurt." Tobias said. <Everyone morph to birds. We need to haul out of here in a couple minutes.> "Tobias, what have you done?" I demanded. Tobias yelled in a blaze of sudden anger. "You need to explain this right now," Jake said in the low, silky voice he uses when he's really mad. <Start morphing or I'll explain nothing,> Tobias said. <Just do it!> Rachel started morphing to her eagle morph. Jake hesitated, but there was a force to Tobias I'd never heard before. Jake began to morph. Then Marco. Ax. What could I do? I had to go along. I had to morph. he said. I wanted to tell him he was wrong. But I knew he wasn't. I wanted to cry. But I had become an osprey. Birds don't cry. It was monstrous, horrible. Inevitable. <We're going to let these people, these Mercora, we're going to let them Page 88
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs die?> I asked. Tobias said. I agreed. Tobias said darkly. I said. <We'll make more distance. We follow the coast north, then, at the last minute, we head out to sea.> We flew. All through that night, only stopping to demorph every two hours. The sun rose over a scene of breathtaking beauty. We were over a river delta. A hundred glistening streams all heading for the ocean. And in that lushness, the dinosaurs. Slow Triceratops, and herds of huge Saltasaurus, the long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs we'd encountered before. There were hadrosaurs and gigantic crocodiles and Pteran-odons diving for fish. Great, lumbering giants. It was a world where elephants would have seemed only average in size. Hundreds of species of dinosaurs, each a miracle of nature. And yes, here and there as we flew we saw the tyrannosaurs and the other great predators. For some reason, although Tyrannosaurus had repeatedly tried to kill us, it was the Big Rex I pitied most. They were so sure of their power. So confident. This was their planet and they were the kings. I wondered if they ever looked up and noticed that something was different in the sky. I wondered if they, too, saw the comet and felt a quiver of fear. The comet was visible even in the brilliant daylight now. And it was beneath that comet, and above the teeming life of the Cretaceous, that we flew. We rested at last in the high branches of a tree. All except Ax, who stayed below. Tobias was right at home there in the trees. And we humans could hang on and feel somewhat safe. Cassie laughed a sad sort of laugh. "Well, here we are, just a few tens of millions of years early. Primates will evolve, and they'll learn to live in the trees, running from the saber-toothed cats and other predators. And here we are now, just a little early." "By now they know," Rachel said, looking back in the direction we'd come from. "Who?" Marco asked her. "The Mercorans. They know the nuke didn't go off. They know it's all over for them." Marco nodded. "Yeah. I wonder if they know why? I mean, that we did it. I wonder if they've figured out that we didn't come from some far-off place, but from some far-off time on this planet. I wonder if they'll Page 91
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs figure out why we ... you know, why." A Saltasaurus came by and stuck his snake head up into the tree, indifferent to us, and munched some leaves. Night came again, and now we flew on urgently, desperate for every last mile. And finally, Ax said it was time. We veered out to sea. We landed in the water, hoping that we could avoid being eaten in the few minutes that remained. We morphed to dolphin, and waited for the world to end. C a s s i e I stayed on the surface to watch the end. The comet was a blazing torch as big as a mountain. It hit, and the entire planet shuddered from the impact. You could almost imagine Mother Earth crying out in pain. But you know, Earth is just a big ball of dirt and water and air and life, spinning through space. It's only important because it's ours. The universe didn't care that the orbit of Earth and the trajectory of a comet would intersect at this time and this place. And yet in my mind, in my heart, I cried out for Earth. The explosive power of a million nuclear weapons went off all at once. It was as if a giant had swung a hammer the size of the moon into our planet. I felt the impact in my insides. The explosion seemed to rip the universe apart. But I never felt the concussion. Because suddenly, I was no longer in the ocean watching the doom of the dinosaurs. I was floating above it all. Floating in air, but not really. In space, only I could breathe. I heard Ax cry. But this time the travel through time was different. We weren't suddenly back where we started. We were hurtling through a void, hurtling past a videotape set on fast forward. I saw the crater. It was a hole big enough to lose a dozen cities in. Flaming hot debris exploded outward. A red-hot fireball rolled across the landscape, burning everything, a blowtorch on dry grass. Trees exploded into flame. Dinosaurs crinkled and blackened and fell dead where they stood, no time even to cry out. The burning wind expanded outward. The sky itself seemed to burn! But then the fireball weakened and from the wreckage rose smoke and dust. Earth was hidden by a blanket of smoke and dust. The sun was blotted out. Earth began to freeze, and still more creatures died. It was all passing before my eyes now, faster and faster. The sky cleared as acid rain fell, disintegrating many plants and starving the remaining dinosaurs. The plant-eaters were too few now. The herds were gone. Only a few pitiful remnants were left, then even they were gone. I saw, in a flash, the last Tyrannosaurus, wandering hungry, thin, Page 92
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs weakened and alone, across a blasted landscape. It was looking for the prey that was no longer there. And then it fell. Time sped up, and the continents floated across the surface of the world. I watched Antarctica slide to the bottom of the planet and grow icy. I watched the Atlantic Ocean appear where only an inland sea had been. India broke away and then slammed violently into the bottom of Asia, rippling up the Himalaya Mountains. Ice sheets advanced and retreated. Forests spread and withdrew and spread again. Mountains rose up sharp and craggy, then crumbled slowly to softer, smoother shapes. And everywhere, the small, brown, fur-covered creatures increased in number. They filled the land the way the dinosaurs had. They migrated into the seas. They became plant-eaters and meat-eaters. Big and small, cute and deadly, slow and fast. And suddenly, there they were in the trees, swinging from branch to branch. And an instant later, some were banging rocks together and forming tools of bone and wood. They walked erect, on two legs. They built huts and villages and cities. But all of this passed in a flash. Because in the long, long history of Earth, the entire history of Homo sapiens is not even the blink of an eye. The dinosaurs ruled for a hundred and forty million years. Humans have existed for less than one million years. I was in water again. My friends were there, too. I fired my dolphin echolocation clicks and "saw" ships in the water. And I felt the last, dying echoes of the underwater nuclear explosion that had first opened the Sario Rip. <We're right back when we began,> Ax said. We demorphed near the beach and when we climbed out, there was the boardwalk. It was still raining. There was no volcano. No giant footprints in the sand. We went to our homes, dazed, awed, and watched the news reports of the terrible disaster at sea. A disaster that, fortunately, had not resulted in any deaths. The Navy diver who was the hero of the rescue swore she'd been led to the submarine by dolphins. Some people suggested maybe she was suffering from hallucinations brought on by the depth and by breathing the wrong mix in her scuba tanks. I returned to my life, feeling strange and out of place. That night Jake came over. We went outside. "I tried morphing the Tyrannosaurus," he said. "Nothing. Didn't work." "You could ask Ax. He may know why." Jake laughed. "Yeah, but even if he explains it, I still won't understand it." "Maybe it was all just a dream," I said. "No. Not a dream," Jake said. "But it all happened a long time ago." Page 93
K[1]._A._Applegate_-_Megamorphs_02_-_In_The_Time_of_Dinosaurs "Were we always there? I mean, were we meant to be there? To do what we did? Was everything supposed to happen a different way? Should this planet be ruled by the Mercora today? Or the Nesk? Should there still be dinosaurs stomping around? Did we make it all right or mess it all up?" Jake didn't have an answer, so I slipped my arm through his. We looked up at the sky for a while. "No comet," Jake said. "Not today, anyway," I said. A note: